Officials in 2 Counties Mount Drive to Close Road Off the Beaten Track

CORONA —  A rocky, rutted road snakes up steep hills and around rugged canyons in the northern Santa Ana Mountains, where the dusty, chaparral-covered landscape is distinguished mostly by its remoteness.

This austere, fire-prone area between the growing suburbia of northeastern Orange County and northwestern Riverside County is ill-suited for recreational uses, U.S. Forest Service officials say.

And the 15-mile stretch of narrow, tortuous road, which serves only a handful of private property owners in these hills, is difficult to maintain, scantily used and often deadly, Riverside County road officials say.

So, like their counterparts in Orange County, road officials want to close their 4 1/2-mile portion of Skyline Drive.

“The access will not be shut off (to residents). . . . It will simply be that the property owners, those who choose to live up there, will pay for the maintenance of the road,” county Road Commissioner LeRoy D. Smoot said this week at a meeting at the foot of Skyline Drive in south Corona.

Formal Hearing Set

A formal public hearing on the proposed closure, before the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, is set for Tuesday afternoon.

Then, outdoor enthusiasts say, they will try to persuade the supervisors that Skyline Drive should be kept open so that they can continue to enjoy its solitude and to take in its scenic vistas.

But at Thursday’s “town meeting in the road,” discussion was dominated by area landowners who, citing vandalism and safety concerns, favor closing the road to the public. One property owner, Robert Roaney, claimed vandalism losses of $50,000 over the past 10 years.

Although Roaney said he would gladly pay his share--estimated at $300 annually--of maintenance costs to make Skyline Drive a private road, most others at the meeting said the county should continue to bear the cost of maintaining Skyline Drive.

‘A Great Idea’

Larry Booth, a resident of Diamond Bar, said he plans to build a house on his 58-acre parcel off Skyline Drive but cannot afford to pay both property taxes and road maintenance fees.

“Gating it off to outsiders is a great idea,” said Dick Tichy of Corona, who is part of a group that owns 168 acres in the northern Santa Ana Mountains, in echoing the sentiments of most area property owners.

But Marvin Laird of Corona, a frequent user of Skyline Drive for a dozen years, argued: “I object to being told that we (Riverside County taxpayers), will maintain the road, and not be able to use it.”

The U.S. Forest Service, which owns more than half of Skyline Drive, understands the two counties’ concern with liability, said Bill Pidanick, public information officer for Cleveland National Forest’s Trabuco Ranger District.

Forest Service Lacks Funds

The Forest Service, he said, “just doesn’t have the finances. . . . We don’t have the ability to maintain that road on a regular basis.”

Still, Pidanick added: “We don’t like to lose (public) access to the national forest.”

On a clear day, from the road’s highest points, one can see hundreds of square miles of wooded canyons and green meadows, citrus groves and snow-capped peaks.

But, road officials ask, at what price?

“From January, 1981, to October 1985--56 months--there has been (on average) a road-related death every eight months and a moderate to severe injury every two months on Skyline Drive,” Smoot said in a report to the Riverside County supervisors.

Six of those seven deaths occurred in 1981, however. There has not been another fatal accident on Skyline Drive since 1982.

15 People Hurt

Last year, 15 people were injured in six accidents on the road, said Alan Manee, an associate planner for Riverside County. Two of those injured required hospitalization for a week or more. “We don’t want people to be continually injured or killed or . . . crippled for life,” he said.

A recent out-of-court settlement, in a lawsuit stemming from a 1982 accident on Skyline Drive, cost Riverside County $200,000 and its insurer $3.5 million, Manee said, but he could not provide any figures on the county’s previous liability losses on Skyline Drive.

One lawsuit--involving a death on the road--was settled last year “for a nominal amount,” he said. No additional lawsuits are now pending over accidents on the road.

Traffic counts taken in January and August, 1985, showed an average daily volume of 60 vehicles, about evenly divided between recreational users and residents, Smoot’s report says.

Closure Recommendation

At Thursday’s meeting, Manee told area residents that recreation accounts for 70% of the road’s traffic.

The Road Department’s recommendation for closing Skyline Drive includes installation of two locking gates, barriers and signs, at a cost of about $10,000.

A gate the county previously installed near the foot of the road was bypassed by many users and repeatedly vandalized. It served more as a target for illegal shooting than as a barrier to Skyline Drive.

The future of Orange County’s 10-mile segment of the same roadway, called Black Star Canyon Road, is also uncertain. The road is already closed for most of the year--during rain and fire seasons--and county road officials want to abandon it as a public road. But other county officials would like to see it improved for access to a proposed park site.

Plan ‘On Hold’

The Orange County Environmental Management Agency had already begun putting together a proposal to close the Black Star Canyon Road. That action would require a public hearing before Orange County’s Board of Supervisors.

“We’ve been preparing for it, (but) right now it’s on hold,” said Carl Nelson, the county’s director of public works, because parks officials have their eyes on Hidden Ranch--the site of Orange County’s only Indian battle--as a regional park in Black Star Canyon.

County officials are now investigating how to acquire the ranch, which includes several hundred acres, Nelson said. A regional park in that area has long been in the county’s master plan.

If the acquisition of the ranch comes to fruition, Black Star Canyon Road “would obviously have to be improved, if there were to be increased public use,” Nelson said.

Liability a Factor

As in Riverside County, potential liability has been the major factor in Orange County’s plan to abandon the road, said Bill Reiter, public works operations manager.

Under California law, a defendant with great financial resources, or “deep pockets,” may be responsible for paying the bulk of damages in a lawsuit, even if it shares only a small portion of the blame for an accident.

“That road is an accident waiting to happen,” Reiter said. “ . . It’s just not a safe road for the public to drive on.”

Riverside County’s section of the road is open, he said, “and what have they got to show for it? Three- and 4-million-dollar lawsuits.”

While a few Orange County residents have protested the plan to abandon Black Star Canyon Road, citing the area’s natural beauty, most “people that use the road are there not to seek out the beauty of the canyon,” Reiter said, “but to race up and down the road.”

Landowner Opposition

Landowners have long opposed keeping Black Star Canyon Road open, Nelson said. “The existing property owners do not like having the road open to the public. The public that uses the road often causes trouble for the property owners up there.”

The property owners cite the misbehavior of the road’s users--drinking, unsafe driving, littering, illegal shooting, vandalism and trespassing--and buttress their argument with a claim that the road is on their private property.

Those using Black Star Canyon Road for recreation and those trying to maintain it have often run afoul of local landowners, who maintain the county has no right to gpen the roadway or to cross their properties to work on it.

Recreational users are familiar with the inch-thick steel sign erected by one property owner, claiming the road is private. And county officials acknowledge that their claim of public ownership is not rock-solid.

No Complete Deed

“We have deeds over some of it,” Felson said, “but not all of it.”

Both counties maintain that property owners have, in effect, granted a public easement by allowing public use of Black Star Canyon Road and Skyline Drive over the years, however. If Orange County does abandon the road, which was built in the 1920s, it will “reserve an easement for emergency and service vehicles,” Nelson said.

Abandonment would mean, however, the road would be permanently closed to the public, rather than being open for a few weeks in the spring and fall.

Dense, dry chaparral, strong Santa Ana winds, and statistics that show that people start 98% of the area’s fires, dictate the fire-season closure, said Pidanick of the Forest Service.

Impossible to Maintain

Mud and rock slides, combined with the area’s steep terrain and the road’s sharp curves, make road maintenance virtually impossible during the winter, Reiter said.

“Even moderate rainstorms can make this road impassable with conventional vehicles,” states Smoot’s report to the Riverside County supervisors.

In 1985, November’s rains came right on the heels of the fire season, so Black Star Canyon Road was never opened to public use in the fall, Reiter said. The road was “open two or three weeks, at the most,” last spring.

In the early 1970s, officials hoped federal highway funds would improve the road, much of which had been destroyed by floods in 1969. They spoke of paving portions of the road, and even of rebuilding it entirely as an all-weather, paved highway to provide a scenic route between Orange County and Corona.

Washouts and Slides

The washouts and slides of 1969 were repaired, and the gate at Orange County’s end of the road was unlocked in 1975. Winter storm damage in 1978 again closed the road for two years, on both sides of the county line.

The Skyline Drive side was also closed for three weeks in 1983 due to road damage.

Only about four miles of Black Star Canyon Road--from its western end at Silverado Canyon Road, near Irvine Lake, into the National Forest--have ever been paved.